


Acquaintances

by eerian_sadow



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Community: tf_speedwriting, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, maybe pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-12
Updated: 2010-06-12
Packaged: 2018-05-17 16:49:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5878270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eerian_sadow/pseuds/eerian_sadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment of understanding over energon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acquaintances

**Author's Note:**

> This is set long before the Autobots leave Cybertron in search of energon on other planets. Just after the fall of the Towers, in fact, and while Mirage is still in training after joining the Autobots.
> 
> Written for tf_speedwriting for Saturday (June 12, 2010) prompt #2 “  
>  Task: Write your OTP from your current favorite continuity in your favorite genre.” My OTP, of course, is Wheeljack/Mirage and my current favorite genre seems to be friendship or pre-slash. This can go either way.

“Is this seat taken?”

Wheeljack looked up in surprise at the question. He honestly couldn’t think of any mech—aside from Ratchet and sometimes Optimus Prime—who ever wanted to sit at the same table. Despite himself, he glanced around to the room to see how crowded it was before giving Mirage an answer.

“Uh, no. You can sit here.” The engineer barely kept himself from covering his optics with embarrassment at how lame—how uncultured—his reply was.

Mirage didn’t give any indication that he noticed. He simply slid into the seat across from Wheeljack and set his ration down on the table. The noble gave him a small smile. “I hope you don’t mind. You’re the only mech in here whose name I even know right now.”

Wheeljack returned the smile. “No, it really is fine. Mechs just don’t like to sit with me often. I have a reputation for spontaneously exploding.”

“How on Cybertron would you get a reputation like that?” Mirage gave him a disbelieving look.

“They remember the more spectacular explosions and never the things that work right.” Wheeljack twitched a shoulder in a shrug. “It’s lonely sometimes, but it’s not that big a deal. I don’t know most of them very well anyway.”

“That seems horribly unfair.” The spy took a drink of his energon and though for a moment. “And please forgive my ignorance, but what exactly do you do around here? I’ve been told your title, but there are many kinds of engineers.”

Wheeljack chuckled. “Sometimes I think the academy gave me an engineering specialty because they didn’t know what else to do. I invent things.”

“That sounds… rather tedious to be honest.”

“Oh no.” The inventor shook his head. “I love it. Sometimes I just expand on an existing idea—like the energon dispensers. I didn’t make the technology, but I expanded it a bit so that we could have several dispensers running on the same circuits and drawing from the same energon pool without overloading the system. And we have the most energy and resource efficient wash racks on Cybertron at this base.”

Mirage smiled at the obvious pride in the other mech’s tone. “But that can’t be all you do.”

“Not at all. I do a lot of experimental work. It’s not always fruitful, but sometimes I come up with some pretty ground-breaking stuff. Your electro-disruptor, for example. I did the initial research and development for that technology back in the academy.” Wheeljack looked down at the table, suddenly embarrassed. “Wow. That makes me sound really old.”

The spy-in-training examined the engineer for a long moment. “Does it help if I tell you that you don’t look that old? Your creator must have been a bit of an inventive genius himself, with such a currently modern age frame for you.”

The engineer’s embarrassment grew. He knew his head fins—always such a dead giveaway for his emotional state—must be a ridiculously bright red right now. “I… uh… Thanks. He was a sculptor.”

“I’m grateful that I get to experience his art, then.”

When Wheeljack looked back up in surprise, there was no mocking on Mirage’s face. Just that same, small smile and perhaps—just perhaps—a hint of true appreciation.  



End file.
